21 September 2005

Convocation: Funny Hats and Helpful Frames

This afternoon at the GTU's Opening Convocation, the topic was "Negotiating the Boundaries in Theological and Religious Studies." The address was given by Ann Taves, professor of religious studies and Virgil Cordano OFM Professor of Catholic Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. ( past topics and speakers ) Judging the very low turnout for the event, with attendance comprised mostly of PhD students with achievements being recognized and the faculty members in their academic costumed glory, I was a little disappointed in the tenor of it, until Ann got into her talk about 10 minutes. Her ideas became a much-need mental file cabinet for about 80% of my struggle since arriving. A while ago, somethingunderstood blogged about how the academic and spiritual dimensions of seminary make for a funny feeling now and again. Am I here for academic formation or spiritual formation? When we read gnostic texts or learn prayer book history, how exactly are we being formed and which sets of biases are we to use to understand the material? Having come from the secular religious studies mindset at KU, being in these classes has so far felt like one big trick question. When Dan said, "Remember that Jesus has already been resurrected at this time," I jerked my head up so fast I got one of those neck cramps you can feel in your tongue. Then I remembered, oh yeah, "resurrection" isn't a bad word here.Faith in the classroom still gives me the heebeejeebees, but I expect I'll get used to it. Train something out of me while I train something else in. And later for PhD, who knows; I'll probably have to do the 180 all over again.

I'll get to the point: regarding religious/secular studies and theological/seminary studies Ann pointed out it might be more useful to think of these two worlds not as opposing or parallel tracks but as two places where someone may or may not be actively engaged in the "making" or "doing" of their discipline. One way to judge this engaged or detached status is through defining major terms of your discipline. For instance, most of my religious studies professors at KU did not care to enter into the debate of what is "religion" but were rather happy to work with materials that somehow fell into that traditional category. We generally side-stepped the definitions with accounts of our inability to ever define "religion" completely, and therefore could go about the business of studying it. This would be the detached performance. I really got interested when she spoke to the fact that though we might be ready to deem most religious studies departments as responsibly "detached" and seminaries as "engaged," it is not neccesarily so, and not necessarily useful if it is so. I think she argued that a little of both in any given context is probably healthy.

"There is the past and its continuing horrors: violence, war, prejudices against those who are different, outrageous monopolization of the good earth's wealth by a few, political power in the hands of liars and murderers, the building of prisons instead of schools, the poisoning of the press and the entire culture by money. It is easy to become discouraged observing this, especially since this is what the press and television insist that we look at, and nothing more.
But there is also the bubbling of change under the surface of obedience: the growing revulsion against endless wars, the insistence of women all over the world that they will no longer tolerate abuse and subordination... There is civil disobedience against the military machine, protest against police brutality directed especially at people of color."
Source: A People's History of the United States, 1999 edition, page 661.